Read Read

My new years resolution was to read 25 books this year and this is me recording that 

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So, I got to 23 1/2 in the end, not quite there but I’m still pleased with it (the last few books I read were “shock of the fall” by Nathan Filer,” Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets of the universe” by Benjamin Alire Sáenz and half way through “Girl 15, charming but insane” by Sue Limb). Considering how many books I’ve previously read in a year it was a really big achievement and it has helped a lot with story telling, so yeah, that’s probably the end of this blog, don’t know if I’ll do this again but thanks anyone that read my reviews, hope they were interesting :D

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21. The Rosie Project - Graeme Simsion 

Pages: 327 Rating: 8/10

Don Tillman is a 39 year old geneticist, he’s incredibly clever but not so good at social skills. Everything he does must be rooted in logic and planning so naturally, when trying to find a wife, he turns into a project and creates a survey to filter out the suitable candidates from the unsuitable. In rolls Rosie, she doesn’t fit any of the survey requirements but she wants to know who her father is thus leading to the father project. But as Don continues to work on the two projects separately, He finds himself making more and more illogical decisions and slowly, under Rosie’s influence, he begins to realise there’s far more to love than he thought.

Another book that I thoroughly enjoyed. Don was a wonderfully well developed, unique and fascinating character and his perspective bought in a whole new way of looking at judging things. Rosie’s character contrasted brilliantly and really brought out all the different aspects of Don’s personality. The story was well paced and I like that it covered all the little details as well as having a nicely concluded ending (even if I didn't realise the first time that it had ended due to it having sneak peaks and bonus content at the back which I presumed were another two chapters). So yeah, ticked all the boxes, nicely paced romance, good humour, well concluded plot and lovable characters. Definitely a book I’d recommend :D

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20. The Girl With the Glass Feet - Ali Shaw

Pages: 292, medium sized text My Rating: 8/10

Midas Crook is a lonely, withdrawn photographer who struggles with any social interaction and who’s lived at St Haudas Land his whole life. Constantly plagued by memories of his father and his past, he struggles to step out of his shell and has resigned himself to minimal human interaction. Then he meets Ida MacLaird, a girl from the mainland who’s feet are turning to glass, and suddenly he finds himself pulled out of his comfort zone and drawn to question  what it means to love.

I loved this book, it’s the first book in a while that I felt I really couldn't put down and was desperate to keep reading. I loved the characters and the writing style worked really well, slipping between the present and the past in a non chronological order that really meant the pieces gradually filled themselves in bit by bit till you got the full picture. I also very much liked that, although Midas and Ida were the main characters, you got parallel story lines from other characters that emphasised and added to Midas and Ida’s relationship each in their own way. The regretful tone to a lot of it was balanced out by elements of positivity and lessons on how we can see life and it basically ticked all the boxes for what I consider a good book :D

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19. The Book of a Thousand Days - Shannon Hale

Pages: 306, mediums sized text with pictures every now and then Rating: 8/10

Set in a fictional kingdom based on medieval Mongolia, Dashti is a Mucker (the people who roam the hills herding animals and singing healing songs) who becomes the maid of Lady Saran who unfortunately has just been sentenced the 7 years bricked into a tower because she wouldn’t marry who her father has arranged for her to marry. The book follow Dashti as she journals their experience while locked away and as she becomes more deeply involved in the dangers beyond the tower.

This is my second time reading this book and I loved it just as much as I did the first time. Dashti is a wonderful, lovable character who you absolutely root for and the book really nails conveying the story believably through the diary format. The whole setting is brilliant too, part of what really makes the story, the belief system and gods are really well developed and created while the whole kingdoms are really captured in the writing. It’s not your usual medieval european style fairytale kingdom and it brings a really interesting cultural aspect to the story. I really recommend reading it.

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18. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying - Marie Kondo

Pages: 237, larger text Rating: 6/10

‘The life changing magic of tidying’, as the title suggests, is a book about tidying. My mum recommended it to me after she’s gotten very into the methods and is now going round of house folding everything that can be folded. It’s split into sections and you could open and just read the sections you’re interested in on their own (there’s a lot of repetition of previous points throughout so that you don’t miss anything if you just read one section). It covers how to get rid of things, how to organise them and the benefits this all has. Marie Kondo’s job is running courses on tidying and going to peoples houses and going through what’s in the book with them, helping them sort it all out so she’s fully qualified, she knows what she’s talking about.

I’ve been now trying out the methods from the book and the main problem I’ve encountered is little things that don’t seem to be covered, like what to do if the folding technique she recommends means your clothes can’t fit in the draw without a ton of unused space, like bruh it’s messing with my mind. 

edit: THERE ARE VIDEOS OF HER DOING THE FOLDING, I think my minds a little less blown now

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19i7oyiKVG0

I think the books definitely worth a read because it is an interesting way of looking at cleaning and there are a lot of good points that you can use, however I did end the book with a lot of questions ( although I do believe theres additional information about more specific parts across the internet that I should probably looks up :P)

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17. Tape - Steven Camden

Pages: 363, quite big pages with quite big writing Rating: 5/10

Amelia is a dealing with the grief of her parents deaths and processing her way through their old belongings. Ryan is trying to make his way through life with his dad, stepmum and stepbrother Nathan. There’t not much I can say beyond that about this story without spoiling it. It’s a bit like a puzzle where you get given all the pieces and as the story progresses, you’re putting them in the right order to make the picture.

It switches between both teens stories having as short as a paragraph from one before switching to the other and I found it took a while to work out what was going on and get used to the layout. The story itself, I found quite slow paced and the plot twists weren’t so much plot twists and more like confirmation of things you'd already guessed. I thought it all came together quite well in the end but I didn’t feel much had really happened.

The blurb kind of suggests it as possibly time travel/romance/fate and stuff but I’d say it’s mostly about processing grief and family. Bit of a like philosophical book? like it mostly came down to questioning is there a set plan for things and I thought it was quite thought provoking and an interesting look at things.

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16. A Boy Called Christmas - Matt Haig

Pages: 265, larger text and lotsa pictures Rating: 5/10

I bought this book in september, thought I’d better wait till closer till christmas to read it, and now have done so, in june, in the summer. It’s a short comedic little story about how Father Christmas became Father Christmas. Set in finland and featuring magical elves and pixies and reindeer that like peeing on the people below them while they fly. Nice combination of points of darker humour with solid morals about helping people and being a good person. 

I liked it, I found it funny and I thought it was an interesting take on father Christmas and his story. Nice balance of gritty sad stuff with colourful happy bits. More aimed at children but I think it’d be entertaining for all ages.

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15. Will Grayson, Will Grayson - John Green and David Leviathan

Pages: 308, medium to small text Rating: 4/10

A story about two guys both called Will Grayson and their relationships with Tiny Cooper. Featuring key themes of friendship, love and making a contribution in the world, it follows the arc of the two Wills deciding who they want to be in the world and who they want with them as they do it. Then theres also a very gay, very fabulous musical.

I didn’t find first Will Grayson to be a character I particularly liked or rooted for to start with and found him a bit irritating but I think as he developed as a person and came to acknowledge and realise his own flaws, he really came together as a character. I much preferred second Will’s parts, I thought it addressed depression and sexuality in a believable and realistic way. For some reason it felt like there was much less of him in the book though? like I’m not sure there was less of him, it just felt like he was a bit of a side character? 

I liked the contrast in writing styles between the two Will’s to really gave the feel of two unique, separate people and I thought the learning curves and development of the characters was done very well. I would have liked to see more interaction between the two Will’s since I liked how their relationship worked but simultaneously it worked, just two guys that ended up indirectly tangled up in each others lives.

In conclusion, at first I didn’t like it, and then I did (much vague, very help). For the majority I struggled to get through it, not finding anything particularly gripping but I liked the message and character development and the ending really brought everything together and pushed the moral through. One of those books that makes you re-look a bit at life, like a little lesson for life.

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14. The Color Purple - Alice Walker

Pages: 261, medium towards smaller text Rating: 7/10

Celie is young black woman who’s life has been a series of traumatic events. She’s been raped, had her children away, been separated from her sister Nettie and been married off to a man who wants her for nothing more than sex and a housewife. Then Shug Avery, a singer who’s not afraid to speak her mind, comes into her life and Celie finds herself learning what it means to be alive, finding her voice and making her own way in life.

Brilliantly written, you really get a sense of feeling to it and the characters are well rounded, well developed, realistic feeling people just trying to go through life together. It uses an African-American Dialect and is presented as a series of letters from Celie to God which allows large periods of time to be passed by quite quickly and means the story is constantly moving. A variety of issues and themes such as gender, race and sexuality are all explored believably and it goes into just enough depth and detail for it to not get overly descriptive or dull. There’s a balance of good and bad and finding happiness within yourself and there’s a strong sense of growth and progression in Celie and those around her.

This is one of the books I’m studying for school and, unlike most of the books we usually have to study, I actually really liked it. Celie’s a character you really want to root for and sympathise with, she’s not showy or extraordinary but she’s there and she’s human. It’s a book that really pushes you to think and learn from the themes and ideas it explores and I definitely recommend giving it a read :D

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13. Into That Forest - Louis Nowra

Pages: 232, nearing larger text Rating: 5/10

Set in the Tasmanian Bush, Into the Forest is the story of two girls, Hannah and  Becky, who after being washed from their boat in a storm are stranded and learn to rely on the help of two Tasmanian tigers who take them in as their own children for four years. The story then accounts Hannah’s life recovering and beyond the events.Told from Hannah’s perspective the stories written in a dialect that was a bit difficult to read at first but I got used to it and you barely notice it later on.

I found this an absolutely fascinating story. It’s a interesting topic and you find out a lot about how the animals survive and their environment. It captured perfectly how living in the wild had mentally effected the two girls and the mannerism they’d taken on and learnt from the tigers and yeah, it was all fascinating to read. I particularly like the way it changed your perception of humanity and what home can mean and it was very thought provoking and educational book.

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12. Seed - Lisa Heathfield

Pages: 331, medium text Rating: 2/10

Seed is a cult made up of adults and children living in the middle of nowhere and worshiping nature and their leader Papa S. The children are raised by all the adults, without knowing their true parents, never seeing the outside world and knowing nothing beyond what they are told to believe by those at Seed. Pearl is 15 and can’t see how anything in the world could be better than what they know at Seed. Then Ellis, his mum and his sister, join Seed bringing with them bits and pieces of the outside and Pearl is forced to start to question what is actually truth and to see the abusive, manipulative and dangerous reality thats hidden in her home.

Pearl’s mentality and the way she’s been raised, make her seem much younger than her actual age and means you get a slightly diluted, more innocent feeling of what’s going on but fundamentally the story is very dark. The main events are unsettling (as to be expected in a book about a cult) and it’s defiantly not a happy story. It very much captures the conflict in pearls mind over which side of seed she chooses to see, the peaceful haven she’s grown up in or the horrific, frightening and dangerous place it actually is. I was screaming at the characters to “get the heck out of there” for the entirety of this book. 

My personal opinion of the story was that It wasn’t badly written and I did want to keep reading to find out what happened but overall I really didn’t enjoy it. I’m not a fan of darker themes anyway but in Seed it felt like the characters reactions to the darker parts, particularly Ellis and his family having known the outside world, were unrealistic. Additionally, it was labelled as a romantic thriller on the back and really the whole romance aspect was almost non-existent and awkwardly executed when it was there, I would not have called it a main thread of the plot at all and the focus was really more on family and friendships than romantic relationships. 

In summery, it was a gripping book to read and it captured the whole cult mentality and idea well, which was interesting, but it felt a bit like it relied on shock factor rather than solid plot and was more of a downwards curve than a fully arched storyline.

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11. Counting by 7′s - Holly Goldberg Stoan

Pages: 345, medium sized text Rating: 9/10

Willow Chance is 12 years old and incredibly super-duper intelligent. She’s obsessed with nature and plants, diagnosing medical condition and she very much likes the number 7. The book follows her as she progresses through the massive change to her life of losing both her parent very suddenly and having to adapt to a patched together ‘temporary’ life and family thats occurs from it. 

I love this book so much. It was written in a way that made you really feel like you were seeing the world through Willow’s eyes and made me challenge how I  choose to take things in each day. It switched between first person and third person throughout allowing the story to be seen from all the characters angles showing how much Willow effected the people around her as well as the effect they had on her. The characters were extremely diverse and felt believable, it engaged with them flaws and all. It had quite a slow pace to it, meaning you didn’t have this magical recovery from her grief but that is gradually progressed  realistically and really allowed you to get to know all the characters too.

I loved reading it so much and I thoroughly recommend it to anyone and everyone.

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10. Maggot Moon - Sally Gardner

Length: 277 pages, lots of blank pages and short chapters so shorter than it looks Rating: 5/10

Maggot Moon is the story of Standish Treadwell, a boy growing up in a dystopian, war torn alternate version of 1950′s England where the motherland is about to land on the moon. Standish can’t read, he can’t write, but he is by no means not intelligent, he just thinks and sees things in his own unique, original way. Living with his Gramps, it accounts the events and results of them surviving joined by the Lush family and their son, Hector Lush, who becomes Standish’s closest friend. 

I found the writing really effective. The use of short chapters to punctuate points and small illustrations on the pages came together really well to express the story. The setting was dark and grim and I would warn there are some gruesome parts but it had an underlying innocence to it and created the atmosphere of seeing it through a child’s eyes for what it was. The storyline structure skipped around in places retelling previous scenes and not quite running chronologically which overall helped portray the messiness of it all as well as adding suspense. 

I liked it. It was short and to the point and had interesting, likeable characters. I found it a little hard to work out what was going on entirely throughout, the setting was all a bit vague but yeah, I liked it.

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9. The Seeing - Diana Hendry

Length: 170 pages, Itty bitty writing  Rating: 6/10

Lizzie’s, a early teen living in post war Britain, has grown bored of the peacefulness of her life. Unable to relate to the events of the war her parents and sister talk of, she constantly wishes for some sort of adventure so when Natalie, the mysterious new girl, joins her class she seizes the opportunity to befriend her in the hope of something new. However, as seemingly innocent games start to take darker turns, Lizzie finds herself unsure where to turn and the world to be a far more complex place than she imagined.

This booked nailed the use of foreshadowing. The story, although when I began I was uncertain what to expect, had a fantastic way of coming full circle with everything leading to it’s finale through carefully placed recurring motifs and such. Each chapter ended with a letter or diary entry (or combination of such) from an alternate view giving you a wider idea of the other characters thoughts and expanding the view point from just Lizzie’s background, which I thought worked as a feature.

There was a clear sense of a chore plot and the story carried a purpose which I very much liked. Despite the post-war setting of the story, the key themes of growing up and coming to terms with the world were relatable and on a whole I thought it was a well written, thought through story. It got across it’s message, to tied up all it’s ends and it all over had a sense that it had been done well.

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8. Everything - David Levithan

Length: 371 pages, Good reasonably large clear sized text Rating: 9/10

‘A’ has never had a body of their own. Instead they spend everyday ‘borrowing’ someone else life, almost like possessing it for a day. A has always been like this, living their life this way from birth to now at 16 year old, so by this point they’re used to it. They’ve given up really questioning and treat it like a job, just going through the motions and progression of the day without much of a thought. Then they wake up as Justin and fall in love with Justin’s Girlfriend, Rhiannon and everything changes. Suddenly life’s a rollarcoaster as A starts to question who they are, what the real purpose of their life is and whether this has to be it as they explore whether they can make something stable work for once in their life.

Each chapter, a new person’s life is introduced as A is living as them and, despite being just the one chapter per person and a lots of people, each felt real and believable. The representation of gender, race, sexuality, body type, situation was all brilliantly diverse as well which was a definite plus. I found the plot line gripping, with enough of a balance between internal character development and external influence meaning it moved along consistently and there never seemed a dull moment. 

At times it felt like the main aim and goal got a little diluted by the amount of new characters constantly brought in although that fitted in with the whole idea and perspective of life it was trying to show. I found the ending tied itself up enough to just about feel satisfying (satisfying endings are always a very important part of a book for me) Although I would love to see further development and exploration of the concept based on what you begin to find out about it towards the end. 

My overall reaction to it was I loved reading this and from start to end I could not put it down. It really got down to the details of what it means to be human and everyones purposes in life and I just absolutely loved it. 100% recommend would read again :D

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7. Little Women - Louisa May Alcott

Length: 323 pages, middle heading towards smaller text, older language but not too old that it’s like morse code Rating: 6/10

Little Women is one of those books that when people see you reading it they all go “Oh I remember reading it, I loved it”. It’s the kind of story you read and it’s not amazing but it’s not bad, it just feels nice, the kind of story you’d read to your children to sleep with. It’s like Nostalgia for a life you never lived but you still somehow relate with.

It follows the journey of four young teenage sisters, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy as they learn to live life without their father (who's away at war) and encounter the daily struggles of becoming “women”. It really feels like it captures the feelings of what it means to be a child and growing up and its one of those books that just makes you feel like you're part of the family. You learn to love all the characters and each chapter is like a lesson teaching you something (nothing in it ever happens without there being a lesson to learn from it).

I found it sweet and nice, the whole story had a very casual atmosphere but with enough happening to keep you engaged. It’s playful and teaches you about life and was just and all round jolly nice read :)

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6. Mortal Engines - Philip Reeve

Length: 293 pages, medium writing nearing on smaller Rating: 9/10

Set way in the future in a world where cities and towns now all move around and eat each others like giant monsters hunting prey. Thomas Natsworthy is an orphan from London (now a big moving traction city) who somehow gets caught up with Hester Shaw. Hester’s got her heart set on murdering the famous historian, Thaddeus Valentine and, after failing and falling off London into the big wide world, they journey on an adventure to get back home, encountering numerous villains and new friends along the way. Alongside all that, Valentine’s daughter, Katherine, sets herself the task of finding out the truth behind her father’s past and what’s really going on in London.

It’s the first in a series I believe but it rounded itself off nicely enough to be read on it’s own. The concept of whole world is incredibly unique and wonderful well developed. Despite being thrown right in to the centre of it all, it quickly manages to explain all that’s going. I found the plot fast paced with constant twists and turns making it constantly interesting and the relationships were well progressed at a believable pace. Although not being particularly cheery on a whole, everything felt like it flowed realistically.

In short, Top notch storytelling that didn’t dilly dally around and a brilliantly executed concept, I thoroughly enjoyed it.